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Most people wouldn't consider car companies tech companies, but they definitely do R&D and directly sell the technology that results from that inside their cars

Most people wouldn't consider car companies tech companies, but they definitely do R&D and directly sell the technology that results from that inside their cars. Probably because people don't even have a good definition of "tech". Everything we use is tech. Even books. Some of it is old, some of it is new. But people's definition of tech mostly centers around when they were born. As a software developer, I mostly care if a company considers their software a competitive advantage. Because they're more likely to treat me well. This is also similar to how I tend to define tech companies: companies that view tech as a competitive advantage. So they aren't just buying stuff off the shelf - they're figuring things out in house, regardless of what they sell.

auggierose 5y ago
Everybody I know considers a car company a tech company. I think there exists a strange Silicon Valley definition of tech out there. But maybe my German bias shows. I mean, most of the stuff in SV barely qualifies as tech.
- bluetomcat 5y ago
  The SV definition of tech leans towards "a user-centric service delivered over the web, with some clever software solutions behind it to handle a lot of data and users".
  - rileymat2 5y ago
    I thought the definition was more about scaling because of the near zero incremental cost of servicing another customer. But using some sort of tech as the product. Other industries also exhibit this, like media. And that is what differs an auto company from a Google. The next car sold still has significant capital investment.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > Everybody I know considers a car company a tech company I have never heard that. Car companies are mostly manufacturing, that is the major part of their organizations and what drives their decisions. They have big engineering teams, but they have way bigger teams working at factories. If you had a company just creating car designs and selling those to manufacturing companies it would be a tech company, but the current ones aren't.
  - auggierose 5y ago
    Audi. Vorsprung durch Technik.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      I don't doubt they were tech companies 80 years ago when things were new and creating new tech was more important. However I don't think that Google or Facebook or Microsoft will be tech companies in 50 years either, its just the nature of having a field being mostly explored and companies being in maintenance mode since there isn't much else they can do.
  - wheelinsupial 5y ago
    I suppose it depends on the car company, but a lot of them are logistics companies coupled with assembly plants. When I visited our customer auto assembly plants the only actual manufacturing going on at was the frame and paint. The rest of the parts were shipped in from other manufacturing facilities. The auto company did design the parts and send them to contract manufacturers, which is what I worked at. Again, I’m sure this depends on the vertical integration and supply chain relationship of each company, but I think there is less manufacturing than assembly going on.
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  For some weird reason, "tech" means "consumer software /SaaS". So, Trello or Yelp is tech, while lasers in space are not tech.
jdsully 5y ago
Cars have been in the small incremental improvement camp for decades which is why they’re not considered tech. Tesla is the outlier because they are pushing a revolutionary change not just incremental ICE improvements and are valued as such on the stock market. Auto makers could turn into tech companies again but their risk tolerance has to be turned way up.
nonameiguess 5y ago
The history of the word "tech" as an industry sector is that it has been used to refer to computing technology, but cars are certainly a technology more broadly understood. But we probably should just stick to industry standard jargon. Lockheed and Boeing are definitely technology companies, but not "tech" companies, although that is even further complicated in that they do sell computing hardware and software products, not just airplanes and missiles. Netflix unambiguously only sells entertainment, though. They use an app and a website as a delivery mechanism, but the app isn't the product. Also, as much as the emphasis on hacker news is think of employment by Netflix as being an engineer for Netflix, engineers are very far from the highest paid contracts. No engineer is getting the $500 million deals Netflix hands out to Shonda Rhimes and Benioff and Weiss. Netflix itself recognizes content is king here.

auggierose 5y ago

Everybody I know considers a car company a tech company. I think there exists a strange Silicon Valley definition of tech out there. But maybe my German bias shows. I mean, most of the stuff in SV barely qualifies as tech.

bluetomcat 5y ago
The SV definition of tech leans towards "a user-centric service delivered over the web, with some clever software solutions behind it to handle a lot of data and users".
- rileymat2 5y ago
  I thought the definition was more about scaling because of the near zero incremental cost of servicing another customer. But using some sort of tech as the product. Other industries also exhibit this, like media. And that is what differs an auto company from a Google. The next car sold still has significant capital investment.
Jensson 5y ago
> Everybody I know considers a car company a tech company I have never heard that. Car companies are mostly manufacturing, that is the major part of their organizations and what drives their decisions. They have big engineering teams, but they have way bigger teams working at factories. If you had a company just creating car designs and selling those to manufacturing companies it would be a tech company, but the current ones aren't.
- auggierose 5y ago
  Audi. Vorsprung durch Technik.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    I don't doubt they were tech companies 80 years ago when things were new and creating new tech was more important. However I don't think that Google or Facebook or Microsoft will be tech companies in 50 years either, its just the nature of having a field being mostly explored and companies being in maintenance mode since there isn't much else they can do.
- wheelinsupial 5y ago
  I suppose it depends on the car company, but a lot of them are logistics companies coupled with assembly plants. When I visited our customer auto assembly plants the only actual manufacturing going on at was the frame and paint. The rest of the parts were shipped in from other manufacturing facilities. The auto company did design the parts and send them to contract manufacturers, which is what I worked at. Again, I’m sure this depends on the vertical integration and supply chain relationship of each company, but I think there is less manufacturing than assembly going on.
burntoutfire 5y ago
For some weird reason, "tech" means "consumer software /SaaS". So, Trello or Yelp is tech, while lasers in space are not tech.

jdsully 5y ago

Cars have been in the small incremental improvement camp for decades which is why they’re not considered tech. Tesla is the outlier because they are pushing a revolutionary change not just incremental ICE improvements and are valued as such on the stock market. Auto makers could turn into tech companies again but their risk tolerance has to be turned way up.

nonameiguess 5y ago

The history of the word "tech" as an industry sector is that it has been used to refer to computing technology, but cars are certainly a technology more broadly understood. But we probably should just stick to industry standard jargon. Lockheed and Boeing are definitely technology companies, but not "tech" companies, although that is even further complicated in that they do sell computing hardware and software products, not just airplanes and missiles. Netflix unambiguously only sells entertainment, though. They use an app and a website as a delivery mechanism, but the app isn't the product. Also, as much as the emphasis on hacker news is think of employment by Netflix as being an engineer for Netflix, engineers are very far from the highest paid contracts. No engineer is getting the $500 million deals Netflix hands out to Shonda Rhimes and Benioff and Weiss. Netflix itself recognizes content is king here.